The Tainted City (63 page)

The demon spoke aloud, the words sibilant and oddly inflected. “Who speaks so boldly to a child of fire?” His tongue flicked out, silver and triply forked. “Ahhh…I taste you,
akheli.
Greedy creatures, scratching about our hearthfire like rats seeking crumbs…though I see you are bold indeed.”

He prowled toward Kiran. Kiran jerked the knife from Stevan’s chest and held it before him like a shield, magefire dancing on the blade. He looked unsteady, almost drunk, spots of febrile color high on his cheeks. He’d
killed
Stevan. Killed a helpless, injured man…but he’d saved Melly in doing it. I felt no horror, no relief, only the numbness of shock.

Marten and Lena moved protectively in front of Melly as the demon passed them, their ringed hands raised and their eyes wary. The demon didn’t look their way. He stepped over Stevan’s body without glancing down and circled Kiran, his tongue tasting the air.

He said to Ruslan, “You stole and bound a temple child, one molded in our image? Even for one as weak and poisoned as this, your life belongs to the red-horned hunters. A pity…your blood holds enough fire to taste sweet.”

Molded in our image
…and I could see it. The black hair, the icy pale skin, the blue eyes, the sharp lines of Kiran’s cheekbones…all a shadow of the demon’s inhuman beauty. Kiran was staring at the demon, his hands white on the knife.

“I fear no hunters.” If Ruslan was rattled by facing a creature he’d insisted didn’t exist, he hid it well.

The demon smiled, revealing ranks of disturbingly red, pointed teeth. “You will,” he said. “Did you think the temple’s worship false?”

Something in Ruslan’s expression suggested he’d thought exactly that. But he said only, “Yours was the power Vidai zha-Dakhar borrowed. Did you give it freely?”

I knew what he was really asking.
Were you a prisoner who might be grateful for release? Or did you share Vidai’s goal, making you an enemy we must destroy?
But how did you destroy a demon? In the tales, only Shaikar himself had the power to unmake them.

“We bargained, he and I,” the demon said. “He provided me an ancient treasure, long lost from the halls of flame. In return, I gave him his wish: to touch the fire within me, wield it as I do…though only so long as he could hold me.” The demon glanced at Vidai’s remains and made a noise like water sizzling off a sun-heated rock. “He was so low a creature, the gap between us was too far without a bridge to span it.” The demon glanced at Melly, then turned his gaze on me. “Some of you rats born on our threshold have souls scarred by our fire, enough that I can touch you, use your lives as timbers.”

Claws pierced the Tainted spot in my head and ripped through my mind. I screamed, clutching my head, the world lost in a red haze—

“The charm!” Lena shouted. “Take it off, Dev!”

I choked out the trigger word and yanked the band from my wrist. The pain in my head faded, though my gut still felt packed with razor-edged shards.

Ruslan hadn’t taken his gaze from the demon. “You call the Well of the World your hearthfire. Did you know Vidai meant to destroy it?”

The demon’s head cocked. “Destroy? If a dam fails, is the water destroyed? We care not for how our fire flows.” He made the sizzling noise again. “If you seek favor, you will not find it,
akheli
. Your life is forfeit, and nothing you do will turn the hunters aside from your scent. But after long confinement, I am eager to taste sweeter lives than those of rat-children.”

Ruslan pointed at Marten and Lena. “Take them and be welcome.”

They drew breath to chant, light sparking on their rings. I jammed the charm back on my wrist with the trigger word crowding my mouth. But the demon shook his head.

“Not first. Brighter blood than theirs was woven in the spell that freed me…” He blurred forward toward Mikail. Mikail leaped away, magefire blazing from his hands to strike the demon. The demon only shivered, as if caught in a cold rain, and pounced on him. Mikail cried out, wounds gaping open on his body; green fire limned his skin, and the wounds closed just as swiftly, only to rip open again.

Ruslan leaped forward, horror and fury combined on his face. Magefire lashed at the demon; the demon laughed. “It was we who taught the
akheli
to savor pain.” His tongue darted to touch the blood pouring from Mikail’s wounds.

Mikail gasped, his body slumping. Ruslan lunged for the demon, hands outstretched as if to tear him from Mikail bare-handed.

Kiran shouted a string of sibilant, guttural words.

The demon stilled. He dropped Mikail, who collapsed in a boneless heap, and turned to Kiran. Ruslan turned also, surprise writ large on his face.

Kiran repeated the words, stumbling over them this time. His eyes were glassy and huge, his body shaking.

“Do you say so?” The demon made a chuffing sound. “You have blood-right; they are yours to kill.”

“Then leave,” Kiran said. “Return to your fire, and do not touch us or Ninavel again.”

The demon smiled his red, fanged grin. “I’ll yield, child. But only so long as you live…and I think that is not long. Soon enough, their blood is mine.”

He vanished.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then Mikail stirred, groaning. His wounds shimmered and closed. Ruslan shut his eyes in relief. For once, I shared it. If the demon came back before we could get the fuck out of here, better if he had someone with tastier blood than mine to draw his attention. But what had the demon meant about Kiran not living long? Was that only in comparison to demonkind?

I jumped in surprise when Kiran spoke again. He said in the thin, wavering voice of a child, “Ruslan…I remember the temple, I…”

Ruslan hurried toward him; halted. He reached for Kiran, slow and cautious as a man seeking to gentle a skittish horse. “You need not remember it, Kiran. You are safe now.”

“My barriers,” Kiran said. “I can’t rebuild them. It hurts, Ruslan, it
hurts—”
He keened and toppled over, his back arching into a taut, straining bow.

Ruslan caught him, sank to his knees on the stone. Kiran convulsed in his arms, his eyes rolled up to the whites, his heels drumming on the ground.

“Kiran!” Never before had I seen Ruslan afraid. I stood frozen, at a total loss. What was wrong with Kiran?

“
Marten.
” The sharpness of Lena’s tone made me turn. Marten was staring at Kiran with an expression that left my chest hollow. There was no surprise in it. Only a silent, grim struggle, as if he weighed some terrible decision.

Lena had seen it too. She caught his arm. “What do you know?”

Marten met her eyes. After a heartbeat, hers widened. The blood drained from her face to leave it sallow. “Give him the drug, Marten! He thought Stevan his enemy—” Lena stopped, swiped a hand over her eyes. Her voice tightened. “The demon. You heard what he said. If Kiran dies, and he returns…”

“Yes.” The struggle on Marten’s face eased. He drew a vial of black liquid from a pocket.

Lena snatched it from him and raced to Kiran’s side. Ruslan caught her hand, glaring at the vial. “What is that?”

“It will stop the convulsions.” Lena tore her hand free. “Hold him while I get his mouth open.”

Ruslan’s glare didn’t lessen, but he obeyed. Lena pressed her fingers deep into Kiran’s jaw, his neck; the muscles slackened and his teeth parted. She dumped the vial’s contents into Kiran’s mouth and stroked his throat to force a swallow.

Kiran arched backward so hard I heard his spine crack. Ruslan snapped, “You said it would—”

Kiran slumped with a long, wavering sigh. His eyes fluttered open, but they were unfocused, the pupils blown wide. Ruslan pressed his hands to Kiran’s temples. For an instant he held the pose; then his head jerked up.

“
What have you done?
” he shouted at Marten.

A bleak smile touched Marten’s mouth. “Did you think I would simply hand you Kiran without taking precautions first? We have not your skill with bindings, Ruslan…but we know far more of the body’s functioning than you have ever bothered to learn. There is a certain balance of humors in adult mages that allows them to withstand the energies of confluence magic. Distort that balance enough—as happens when a body has built a dependency on a certain drug, and that drug is withdrawn—and spellcasting itself will push body and soulfire further and further out of balance, until any touch of magic brings death even a blood mage cannot escape. Unless more of the drug is given…and we hold the only knowledge of its formulation.”

Horror leached through me. Marten’s plan hadn’t been to poison Ruslan, but Kiran? Turn him into an addict, chain him with a drug that ensured he’d die if he tried to slip his bonds? The Alathians must have drugged Kiran’s food during those long weeks in Tamanath…but Lena hadn’t known of it. Talm couldn’t have either, or else Lizaveta would have seen it in his mind.

Of course Talm and Lena hadn’t. Marten must not have wanted any of the mages who regularly guarded Kiran to know, in case they let something slip. Because long before the trip to Ninavel, the Council had wanted a way to kill Kiran—and that didn’t exactly match with all Marten’s promises to him of sanctuary and acceptance.

Ruslan looked ready to tear Marten’s throat out with his teeth. “You will tell me of this drug.”

“No,” Marten said simply. “You cannot cast against us, cannot take the knowledge from my mind. I do not even have any of the drug here. Lena gave Kiran enough of a similar substance to keep him alive for a few hours yet; but any spellcasting will hasten his death. If you wish Kiran to live, you must let me take him back to Alathia.”

“Alathia!” I blurted. “You’ll never make it to Alathia in only a few hours, Marten!” Thirty miles from the cirque to the border…that meant at least three days’ travel over terrain as rough as that of the cirque’s surroundings.

Marten said, “The Watch waits just outside our wards. For a distance this close, I need only mark an anchor point and signal them”—he slid a message charm from his pocket, held it up—“and they can cast a translocation spell to bring any who stand in the anchor point’s sigils to them. Once we cross inside the wards, they will give Kiran another dose of the drug. If that comes soon enough after the translocation, he may survive. But if he remains here, his death is certain. The choice is yours, Ruslan.”

He may survive
… Marten wasn’t sure Kiran should live. Did he know why Kiran had killed Stevan, or had he been too busy casting to see Ruslan’s attempt on Melly? But gods, his so-called precautions…he’d planned all along that if Kiran slid too far into blood magic, he’d simply stand back and let him die. The bastard! So much for that talk of
I will not abandon you
.

Ruslan didn’t move, his body rigid. I couldn’t breathe. What would he do? Would he let Kiran go, knowing he couldn’t cast against Alathia to get him back? Or would he rather see Kiran dead than let Marten win?

Mikail spoke, hoarse and strained. “Ruslan
.
”

Ruslan turned to hold Mikail’s gaze. I couldn’t read in their expressions what they said to each other. But Ruslan’s fingers dug hard into Kiran’s shirt, over Kiran’s heart. He looked up at Marten, his hazel eyes bleak and furious.

“Take him. But my knife will find you even if my spells do not, Martennan. We
akheli
live long…and we do not forget. You have sealed your country’s ruin.”

Marten’s grip tightened on the message charm. He said to Lena, “Go find Cara. I’ll scribe the sigils.”

So he meant to take us all to safety, not just Kiran. I hadn’t been sure. The clouds above were clearing, patches of blue sky showing through. Across the tundra and talus, the caves at the base of the Scythe of Night were visible, dark holes dotting the lower cliffs.

“Wait,” I said to Lena. “While you’re looking for Cara, can you check if there are any other people in the caves? Other kids?” Like Pello’s son.

“I will cast a seeking spell.” Lena hurried away from the lake toward the caves.

Ruslan stood, but Kiran twisted to clutch at him. “Ruslan…” Fear glazed his eyes, his face as white as the demon’s. “No, please! They’ll bind me, change me…”

Oh, gods. He still believed Mikail’s lies, thought himself given up to suffer at the hands of enemies.

Pain spread over Ruslan’s face. He knelt again and clasped Kiran to him, whispered in his ear. Kiran’s panicked breathing slowed—only to speed again, as Ruslan murmured something else.

“No!” Kiran sounded more terrified than ever. “Ruslan,
no
, you must not—”

Ruslan touched Kiran’s brow. Kiran’s eyes rolled up, his body relaxing into unconsciousness.

Fuck. What had Ruslan done to him? Marten was watching them with grim intensity. Would he give Kiran the drug if we made it through the border? Or did he think Kiran beyond saving, as Stevan had?

I glanced at Stevan’s body. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth drawn in a rictus. Blood was crusted on the wound left by Kiran’s knife.

Was Stevan right? This business of temples, and blood-right…was there some deeper link between Kiran and demonkind than that shadow of physical resemblance?

I didn’t know. And damn, my gut hurt. I staggered over to Melly, lifted her off the stone. “Marten. Can you break this sleep-fast charm and wake her up?”

He said shortly, “Leave her sleeping. Our healers will look at her after we cross the border. And you. Your injuries will only worsen without treatment.”

In other words,
don’t even think about running off after the spell’s cast.

I hadn’t planned on it. “Marten…did you see what happened with Melly? Or were you too busy casting?”

He said, “I saw, but I am not yet certain of Kiran’s reasons. If I bring him to the Council as he is now…”

He didn’t continue, but I heard what he wasn’t saying. They’d sentence Kiran to death in a heartbeat. A sentence they could now carry out with terrible ease.

I lowered my voice even further. “Just now, did…did Ruslan mess with his head again?”

“I felt no casting,” Marten said. “Do you remember what I told you about showing Kiran the truth?”

“Yeah.” Though even if Kiran agreed to look at my memories, and believed them… “Would that be enough?” I wasn’t so sure the Council would care.